This specification relates to serving expandable content items for presentation in content item environments.
Sponsored content (e.g. advertisements, deals or special offers) can be provided over the Internet to various user devices. For example, a web page can include slots in which sponsored content can be presented. These slots can be defined in the web page or defined for presentation with a web page, for example, along with search results or other content. Sponsored content can also be delivered through dedicated web portals or applications executing on the user devices.
Some content items are expandable. For example, a content item can be initially presented in an unexpanded form as a 728×90 pixel graphical item. When an expansion event occurs, an expanded view of 728×270 pixels can be presented. The expanded view of the content item should fit inside the web page as rendered on the browser to present unwanted effects such as clipping.
Expandable content items may expand uni-directionally or multi-directionally. A uni-directional expandable content item can only expand in one direction, such as “down”, “up”, “left”, or “right.” A multi-directional expandable content item, on the other hand, can expand in two or more directions, e.g., either in an up or down direction, or in a left or right direction, as determined at advertising rendering time.
Because the content items are served for particular content item environments in a web page, a client device typically requests the content items when the page is being rendered at the client device. The content item management system that receives the request attempts to select, in response to the request, content items that can expand in a direction for which there is available space for expansion on the web page. For example, a content item environment at the top of a web page should not receive an expandable content item that expands only in the “up” direction; rather, it should receive an expandable content item that expands in the “down” direction (or, alternatively, in one or more of the “down”, “right” and “left” directions, if there is space available for expansion in the “right” and “left” directions as well).
Content item serving systems use various models to determine the expansion directions available for a request. The models are typically resource specific. Resource specific models are based on observed expansions and/or calculated expansion directions of an expandable content item environment for a particular resource. For example, for a resource with three content item environments, reporting data may be received from a user device executing reporting instructions. The reporting data are used to determine expansion directions for each content item environment in the resource. The reporting data are stored by a server system that creates a model that predicts an expansion direction for each content item environment in the resource. The model is then consulted for content item requests that are received to determine expansion directions for incoming requests. While these models work well for observed resource and content item environment combinations, expansion directions for new resource and content item environment combinations cannot be predicted, as there are no data available (or insufficient data available) for these new combinations.